Fiction: Hedonics, Inc.
A fiction story for the holidays
Continuing my tradition of publishing fiction while I’m on vacation, here’s a story for this holiday week.
This story was originally published in
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Liz's gaze fixated on the patient's face as the surgeon drove an electrode deep into his brain. A skull clamp held the patient's head in place as the medical staff operated behind him.
Frank sat beside Liz in the frigid observation room. He was dressed in the usual formal business wear he wore even back in their grad school days. His knee with excitement as they watched the surgery through tinted glass.
Liz hadn't known what to expect when Frank had announced his secret project, Rapture, was ready for a test-run, but she certainly hadn't expected brain surgery. She shuddered. The patient was on end-of-life care, but surgery seemed unnecessarily risky for something that wouldn't improve his health.
The surgeon's voice crackled through the intercom. "The electrode is in the nucleus accumbens now." He stopped and checked a small device next to the patient's head. "Baseline measurement of 460.3 hedons-per-hour. Activating stimulation." The surgeon nodded to an assistant, who flipped a switch.
The patient's jaw went slack and his eyes glazed over.
Liz stood up. She frantically looked around at the medical staff, trying to discern if something had gone wrong. Her heart was in her throat. She turned to Frank. "Is he okay?"
Frank didn't respond. He leaned forward and watched the surgery suite intently.
The surgeon again checked the device next to the patient's head. His voice came through the intercom. "The reading is stable at 8.3 kilo-hedons-per-hour."
Frank let out a whoop. Liz's mind reeled. She and Frank had developed the methods for measuring hedons—a precise measurement of how much pleasure one was feeling based on brain activity. The only readings she had seen approaching these levels were the experimental subjects during sexual climax. To see it sustained over time was unheard of.
"Is it safe to keep this up for so long?" she asked, trying not to let her discomfort creep into her voice.
Frank nodded. "We're well within the safety limits established by simulations. It's working as planned. Project Rapture is finally a reality."
Liz's spine tingled as a thread of drool made its way down from the patient's mouth. "You plan to keep him like this?"
"Yep. We'll pump in IV fluids and nutrients to keep his body going so he can experience pure bliss 24/7."
Liz couldn't believe it. "We're supposed to make people happier," she whispered.
Frank frowned and looked at her. "And we are. He's totally blissed out."
Liz shook her head. "I'm not sure the hedon reading even makes sense here. You're directly stimulating the brain's pleasure circuit, and measuring the activity in that same area. Of course it's going to be highly activated. You're gaming the system."
Frank didn't hide the frustration in his voice. "We agreed when we established Hedonics that creating hedons was our goal. Now you're upset that I've found an efficient way of doing it?"
He had a point. They had started Hedonics to combat the growing melancholy pervading society. Increased automation in the past decade led to a feeling of purposelessness in the population. The foundation's mission was to find—or invent—the most efficient ways of creating happiness, and then provide them to society at scale. Hedons were written directly into that mission. It was the yardstick for measuring their success—and determined how their funding was allocated to projects.
Frank had certainly found an efficient method of generating hedons. But it felt all wrong.
"Look at that guy, Frank. He's comatose. Is this really a success?" Liz asked. Even if this project was only an alternative to other pain management for those on end-of-life care, it made her uncomfortable to think Frank would use Hedonics resources to pursue it further.
"I'm just going by the numbers. More hedons mean more happiness in the world, and that's an objectively good thing. A hedon's a hedon." Frank replied. He turned back towards the surgery suite, signaling that he considered the conversation over.
Liz took another look at the patient. His eyes rolled back in his head. She knew Frank well enough to know she wouldn't get through to him. She grabbed her bag. "I have work to do," she said, and walked out of the observation room.
Seeing the progress on Rapture rattled Liz. Her project, Athena, was struggling. If successful, it would take the guesswork out of depression treatment. Depression rates had skyrocketed in recent years. Coming up with a better treatment, especially for the traditionally untreatable cases, would help a huge segment of society.
Plus, it would help her son.
She ground her teeth as she looked at the data on her screen.
"Mom, hurry this up," Matt's voice echoed out of the imaging chamber.
"Just a few more minutes," Liz said. He complained about these sessions, but he always agreed to participate. He knew how important it was to her. Liz appreciated it—they had hundreds of other participants, but Matt was easy. He was always available since he was taking a year off between high school and college. And if Athena worked for anyone, Liz wanted to make sure it worked for him. "For this next scan, think happy thoughts."
"Happy thoughts like that this is over?" Matt said.
Liz rolled her eyes. At least Matt was showing some of his old humor. Maybe the new treatment was working after all.
"Whatever makes you happy. We just want a scan of a positive brain state."
Matt showed his readiness, and the scanner whirred. A lab tech read off the analysis. "Major divergence in glutamatergic synaptic connections between simulations and actual."
Liz sighed. They had used billions of high-fidelity simulations to project how Matt's brain would respond to the effects of different molecules combined with various other sensory or behavioral therapies. They were searching the space of possible treatment combinations to one optimized for Matt's specific disorder and neural chemistry.
The simulations always found some new treatment that was supposed to greatly improve his depression. Yet, just like all the other subjects in her studies, Matt's actual brain didn't behave as the simulations predicted. Some small difference between the starting conditions of the simulations and Matt's actual brain, combined with the complexity of the system, caused them to rapidly diverge. While the simulated brains showed a reduction in symptoms, Matt's depression remained.
"Mom, seriously, are we almost done?"
"Almost," she replied. For today, at least. Liz had to write up her results for the quarterly report. She had hoped this last scan would show some progress that she could include.
Matt wiggled a bit in the chamber, causing the scanner to lose its reference points.
"If you kept still this would go faster," Liz said.
"You're not going to fix me."
Ice crept up Liz's spine and a lump formed in her throat. She tried to keep her voice steady. "I'm not trying to fix you, honey."
"I'm not an idiot."
Liz didn't know how to respond. She tried to focus on what she was doing but found herself shaking. This was all she knew how to do to help him. If this didn't work—if it couldn't work—she worried what his future would hold.
She continued to work in silence. At least Matt stayed still for the rest of the session.
Liz returned to her seat in the boardroom across from Frank. She had just completed her presentation on the quarterly progress of Athena. She, Frank, and Trustee were the only ones in the room. Of course, Trustee wasn't physically present—it being software, after all—but a holographic representation of it sat at the head of the table.
The donors who had gifted Hedonics its endowment wanted an objective process to direct the foundation. Trustee was that objective process—as an artificial intelligence, it lacked the potential conflicts of interest of flesh-and-blood humans. It allocated the foundation's resources to most efficiently achieve its mission: the generation of as many hedons as possible.
The seconds ticked by and Liz felt herself sweating as she waited for the response to her report. Trustee wasn't ever chatty and didn't speak until it had converged on what it deemed an optimal judgment.
"Thank you for your report. Frank, please update us on Rapture." Liz sighed in relief. She knew her results weren't great. The lack of reaction was the best she could hope for.
Frank stood and started speaking as a slide appeared on the screen. "You can see the results confirm the pilot's findings—we are creating far more hedons, more quickly and cheaply, than Hedonics has managed with any other project. With further refinements, we could increase the cost efficiency, allowing us to vastly increase the scale of the operation." Frank's project was being tested in a dozen hospice care facilities across North Carolina and now had a few hundred participants.
Frank continued through his presentation, detailing results and a proposed budget for further research and refinements. Liz shifted in her seat. The relative success of Project Rapture so far made her uncomfortable. Not only did it make Athena look bad in comparison, but she worried about what it meant for the direction of Hedonics. Their funding was zero-sum—more money for one project meant other projects received fewer resources.
"Has anyone opted out after starting Rapture?" she asked. Maybe something in the retention numbers would show a weakness in the program.
"The only retention issues stem from the high mortality rate in the hospice care population—that turnover is expected. Voluntary retention has been one-hundred percent. Each month, we stop the stimulation and ask the patient if they want to continue. All of them very enthusiastically do."
Liz raised an eyebrow. "It sounds like people become completely dependent once they're on it. Are you sure this is better than, say, pumping people up on morphine?"
"From a hedon generation perspective, this is an order of magnitude more effective than the strongest opiates. Plus it's sustainable and lacks the side-effects or tolerance development issues of drugs." Frank beamed.
Liz struggled to articulate the problems with Rapture in a way Trustee and Frank would accept. There didn't seem to be a way—it was inarguable that Rapture showed more promise for raw hedon generation than any of their other projects, and she knew Frank and Trustee didn't share her discomfort with the project methods. Before she could think of a way to challenge Frank again, Trustee spoke up.
"Frank, thank you for the update. We approve your request for more research funding."
Liz let out a defeated sigh. Frank grinned ear to ear.
Matt was having one of his bad days. Liz couldn't convince him to get out of bed. He lay there staring at the wall. She sat with him a while, feeling helpless.
Liz walked down the hall to her office. She had to solve the simulation divergence problem. The only way she could help Matt and get Hedonics on the right track was to make progress on Athena. But without Matt, she didn't have a research subject.
Still, she could work on the optimization algorithms that searched the realm of possible treatments. Maybe if they were better at finding solutions that were robust to a wider range of starting states, the difficulty of exactly replicating such a chaotic system wouldn't be such an issue.
The difficult part of the algorithm was defining the right search space. Define it too loosely, and it could come up with bizarre suggested treatments that didn't make physical sense. Put in too many constraints and you could miss potentially promising solutions.
Liz ran the most recent version of the algorithm. To her surprise, it quickly converged on a solution. She groaned at the results—she had given the algorithm too much leeway. It found a form of direct stimulation to the nucleus accumbens that would reduce depression symptoms. It was the simulated version of Rapture.
But maybe that was the only real solution for Matt. She had been trying for so long, and he was still so unhappy. Maybe Frank was right—maybe hedons were all that mattered. The best thing for Matt might be putting an electrode in his brain and letting him experience pure bliss.
Liz shook her head to rid herself of the image of Matt, glassy-eyed and drooling. No, that couldn't be a life worth living. She went back through her code, looking for the bug. She still had a lot of work to do.
Frank was showing yet another set of impressive results in the boardroom. Impressive if hedon-generation was what you cared about, at least. Liz found it disheartening. Rapture was out of the testing phase. Tens of thousands were now in the program, a number projected to grow exponentially.
It seemed like Frank had wrapped up. Liz stood up to leave when he raised his hand to stop her. "One more thing."
Liz frowned and retook her seat. He already covered all the major results, what else could he talk about?
"I'm sure you've seen the positive press coverage we've received. People love Rapture. We've heard from healthy people that they want to experience it."
He's acting like the fact that people are so miserable they want to escape life is a good thing, Liz thought.
"Of course, we don't have plans to expand to everyone just yet, but we have one important expansion announcement. We've made a deal with Medicare, Medicaid, and all the major private insurers. Thanks to the reduction in costs from our efficiency improvements, Rapture is now significantly cheaper than typical treatment for several chronic issues. As such, insurance providers will now cover the costs of Rapture as treatment not only for end-of-life pain management but also severe chronic pain and mood disorders."
"Jesus Christ," Liz's mouth went dry. The room spun.
Frank spoke directly to Trustee. "The biggest inefficiency we have in Project Rapture is mortality in the hospice market. Not only would expanding into mood disorders be partially funded by the insurers, but the market is larger and turnover will be far slower. We're projecting a tenfold increase in hedon-generation in the first year, with continued fast growth for many years following."
"What the fuck! You're going too far, Frank." Liz felt herself shaking.
Frank's eyebrows raised and he paused a moment. He didn't meet Liz's eyes, but then he spoke calmly. "We know this works. Why keep it restricted to the dying?"
"Because at least it makes dying people more comfortable. This is using people who have long lives ahead of them."
"We're not snatching people up from the streets. We only treat those that ask for it."
Liz wanted to pull her hair out. "This doesn't make the world a better place, this is making people into vegetables to increase some calculated number."
Frank opened his mouth as if to reply to her, but then closed it again. He shook his head, apparently deciding not to engage with her further. He turned to face the screen and went back into presenter mode. "While insurance will cover much of the cost, we'll need funds for overhead. If we reallocate the R&D budget that should cover it."
The budget he was asking for would reduce all of Hedonics operations to Rapture.
Liz felt like she was going to burst. She stood up, ready to berate Frank for such a deranged proposal. It would destroy everything they had worked towards. Hedonics, their entire life's work, meant to create a world with as much happiness as possible, would be reduced to creating blissed-out zombies from people that needed help.
But before Liz voiced her objections, Trustee spoke up. "Proposal approved. We will shift budgets and personnel accordingly."
Liz felt numb. That goddamn machine. All it cares about are the numbers, not what they mean. She gaped for a moment and then wandered out of the room in a daze. Frank followed.
Liz turned to face Frank. "Would you really want to be like your patients? Unresponsive with a wire in your brain?"
"Hell yes," he replied hotly.
"Why don't you sign up for Rapture, then?" She demanded.
Frank took a deep breath and calmed himself. Then he met Liz's eyes. "If you're asking whether I want my hedon count to be that high, of course I do. They're objectively having a better time than I am. But I have a duty before I do it. I'm still committed to the mission. I want to help as many people as possible."
Liz felt the anger drain out of her, replaced with exhaustion. She had worked with Frank a long time. She knew they had some differences in opinions on the particulars, but they had a shared vision when they started out. "We wanted to improve lives. Why don't you see that Rapture doesn't make lives better, it ends them?"
Frank sighed. "That's the difference between you and me, Liz. You think there's something more than hedons. To me, the reason anything is good is that it generates hedons. We see art and think it's intrinsically good, but it's just that it creates hedons for the viewers. It might feel ugly, but Rapture just cuts out the middlemen. If we generate more hedons, there is objectively more good in the world. And it doesn't matter how they're generated. A hedon's a hedon."
Liz knew there was no point arguing further. She walked away without another word and headed home.
The next few months, Liz worked at a feverish pace on Athena. With the loss of her research personnel and funding, any progress was up to her. She could only use the scanner after hours. She was hoping for some kind of breakthrough to save the program. But no matter what she did, the simulation always diverged from the actual brain state.
Matt cooperated less and less. Some days he would submit to letting her scan him, but increasingly he wouldn't leave the apartment.
"Why do you even bother?" He asked her one day over dinner. "It won't work. I heard Hedonics has a real solution to depression anyways, Rapture."
Liz felt a chill run down her spine. "That isn't a depression cure."
"The stuff I read said it worked for treatment-resistant depression. It could make me happy."
Liz looked him in the eyes. "Promise me you’ll stay away from Rapture. It's no good, it won't help you."
"I'm an adult. You don't get to tell me what to do anymore, mom." He got up and walked into his room, closing the door behind him.
Liz was surprised to find Matt's room empty one day. She tried calling his phone but didn't get a response. She had a sinking feeling in her gut.
She didn't remember the drive out to the Hedonics facility, or what she said to the attendant there. But she found herself walking through the warehouse, through a maze of the energy-efficient pods Rapture participants were housed in. They were neatly stored, with the cables running out the back carrying in intravenous fluids and carrying out waste.
Liz walked past rows and rows of pods until she found what she was looking for.
Matt's pod.
His eyes stared unseeing at her, his jaw slack and his mouth slightly agape. The weight of her failure was palpable. She hadn't been able to help him.
She stood there, looking at him in the pod, tears streaming down her face. Her only son. She hadn't been able to help him, she hadn't been able to stop Rapture, and now he was as good as gone.
Sobs racked her body. She collapsed to the ground, burying her head in her hands.
When she managed to stop crying and stood back up, she was surprised to find two hours had passed.
She walked towards the exit, numbness overcoming her as she passed the seemingly endless rows of pods.
Liz visited Matt's pod after the first month. Standard procedure included a monthly stop to the neural stimulation, a complete physical, and confirmation the patient wanted to continue with Rapture.
He screamed as soon as they stopped the stimulation, and begged them to restart. If he recognized her at all, he showed no signs of it.
The next few days were spent mostly in bed. She couldn't find the motivation to work on anything. What would be the point? Matt was gone.
One day she rose from bed to find something to eat. On her way to the kitchen, she stopped by Matt's room. She went in and sat down on his bed. The sheets still smelled like him.
She hugged one of his pillows. Matt wasn't dead, but he was dead to the world. The pod was like a cruel parody of a tombstone, mocking her for mourning him while he was alive, yet being Matt's final resting place.
Gazing around his room, she breathed in his scent as if trying to distill some essence of him. She thought about their last few days together—and her fixation on getting another scan of him. His simulations still sat on the Hedonics servers.
Thinking about Hedonics reminded her that Rapture was still expanding, capturing more people in the trap of lifeless bliss. More people like Matt.
She lay back, staring at the ceiling. She had to do something. There must be some way of stopping Rapture and helping Matt. She thought again of Matt's simulations, and the simulation she had run that had inadvertently created a simulated version of Rapture. A plan started forming in her mind.
Liz felt a surprising calm as she took her seat in the boardroom. Months had passed since she had seen Frank or been to any Hedonics meetings. But she had been busy.
Frank looked impassive. He probably thinks I'm going to step down. But that wasn't the purpose of the meeting. It was to show the progress she had made on Athena.
Liz stood and started her presentation. "I'm here to make a proposal. A proposal that will make Rapture as obsolete as Rapture made all other Hedonics projects."
Frank frowned and let out a snort. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"We want a particular pattern of brain activity, representing high levels of hedons. Thanks to Rapture, we now know we can generate this brain activity directly through electrical stimulation. With Athena, we can generate this pattern of activity even more directly. We can create it in software, getting rid of the messiness of dealing with a biological body. I've taken some of our brain simulations and combined them with a simulation of Rapture. The pattern of neural activity—the hedons generated—is the same as it is with a real brain."
Frank gave an uncertain laugh, unsure if she was serious. "We're trying to generate hedons in people, not in software."
"Funny that you want to put more specific bounds on our mission now, Frank. They're generating hedons, much more efficiently than Rapture," Liz said.
Frank gaped at Liz for a moment, looking at her quizzically. "You can't be serious about this."
Liz didn't pay him attention. Trustee was her real audience. She had slides of preliminary data showing on the screen. "I've done the calculations. If we reallocate the Rapture funding to Athena and use that to pay for computing infrastructure, hedon generation will increase by five orders of magnitude."
The room was quiet for a moment as Trustee finished processing. Frank was speechless.
Trustee spoke. "Funding for Rapture will be halted. All resources and personnel will be reallocated to Athena. All Rapture equipment and facilities will be sold off to provide additional funds for Athena."
A wave of relief washed over Liz. She stood up to leave. Frank grabbed Liz's arm. "What kind of fucking game do you think you're playing, Liz? This is the end of Hedonics. The end of our mission to increase happiness in the world. How can you think these stupid simulations are doing anyone any good?"
Liz pulled free of Frank's grasp and shrugged. "A hedon's a hedon, Frank."
She turned and left. She had to prepare the apartment for Matt's return. He might not be happy to have Rapture shut off, but his life would be better for it.
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Great read! Kool ending. Recommendation comi. Blessings
Good story, nicely constructed and thoughtful theme. 👍🏽